Iyengar Yoga With Rachel Lovegrove

Workshop for the Alleviation of Depression & Anxiety

Rachel — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 23:08:48 +0000

6th March 2010 at BALANCE Studio, Northampton

A big thank you to everyone who came today to the workshop at BALANCE. We focussed on postures which help to alleviate the symptoms of depression and anxiety. The morning session looked at gentle ways to open the chest leading into some simple back-bending techniques which had everyone giggling – a quite normal reaction! After a short lunch break, we looked at postures to combat anxiety such as inversions followed by more introverted forward bends and restorative postures to calm the senses and rest the nervous system. It was a wonderful day and as we left the studio, the sun shone on a beautiful spring day.

Next workshop dates at BALANCE are 2nd, 3rd & 4th April – check the Classes page for details of a new 7 week class starting on March 15th & 17th plus other workshops around the UK.

Northampton Yoga Classes

Rachel — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:44:31 +0000

Rachel will be teaching at BALANCE Studio, Northampton a 7 week course of Iyengar Yoga classes from 15th March on Mondays from 7pm to 8.30pm (all levels) and Wednesdays from 11.00am to 12.30pm (“Gentle” Yoga Class for those needing to take things a little more slowly and easier.)

Cost is £10 and all levels including new beginners are welcome.

Pre-booking required – come to any class but let Rachel know first! Contact her via rachel@orangetreeyoga.com or call 07725120043.

Iyengar Yoga Weekend in April

Rachel — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:05:02 +0000

Friday, Saturday & Sunday 2nd, 3rd and 4th April 2010

Join Rachel for a whole weekend of yoga at BALANCE, Northampton with options for all levels of student including new beginners. For bookings, please contact Rachel on 07725120043 or email her direct at rachel@orangetreeyoga.com

Friday 7pm to 9pm General/Intermediate Class – £15
Saturday 10am to 12.30pm & 1.15pm to 3.45pm All Levels Day – £18 per session or £35 all day
Sunday 10am to 12pm New Students/Beginners Class – £15

Yoga Workshops Northampton & Winchester

Rachel — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:02:40 +0000

Join Rachel in March for two workshops – one in Northampton and the other in Winchester.

Saturday 6th & Sunday 7th MARCH 2010 – BALANCE Studio, NORTHAMPTON

11am to 1.30pm & 2pm to 4pm Saturday
1pm to 3pm Sunday

How to sequence yoga postures to calm the mind & help alleviate depression

The Saturday morning session is now fully booked so clients are invited to attend the afternoon session (only for students who practice inversions such as headstand and shoulderstand) or the extra all-levels session on Sunday 7th March from 1pm to 3pm.

Prices £18 for each session (suitable for all levels) or £35 for whole day on Saturday. To book, contact Rachel at rachel@orangetreeyoga.com or call 0207 5588658.

13th MARCH 2010 – WINCHESTER, HAMPSHIRE

10am to 12.30pm, Church Rooms, St Mary’s Church, London Road, Kingsworthy

Yoga Morning for All Levels including Beginners.

£18 or £15 for unwaged – Please bring yoga equipment if you have it or contact Rachel to borrow kit.

Location details to be confirmed. Please contact Rachel to enquire.

“YOGA STOPS TRAFFICK”

Rachel — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:43:39 +0000

A message from Odanadi – a charity set up to prevent human trafficking throughout the world.

YOGA STOPS TRAFFICK is a one-day global Yoga event to raise awareness about human trafficking in India and arcross the world.

On MARCH 13th 2010 Yogis everywhere will roll out their Yoga mats to take a stand against trafficking and show their support to its millions of victims.

Kicking-off from the grounds of the Mysore Royal Palace, YOGA STOPS TRAFFICK INDIA will be led by a group of young people from local anti-trafficking organisation Odanadi Seva Trust, many of whom are survivors of slavery, domestic abuse and forced prostitution. Over the years Astanga Yoga has come to play a vital role in their rehabilitation program: building their physical and mental strength, restoring a sense of peace, confidence and self-worth.

Get involved by organising your own YOGA STOPS TRAFFICK event at your local yoga centres, living rooms, parks or any other public spaces – just use your imaginations.

To request more information, promotional materials, fundraising suggestions or to find out more about Odanadi please contact Sean Cleere or Sarah Harris at yogastopstraffick@gmail.com. Or just visit our website www.odanadi-uk.org.

Fantastic Yoga Anatomy & Physiology Books

Rachel — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:58:36 +0000

“Scientific Keys to Unlock the Practice of Hatha Yoga”

Bandha Yoga have produced one of the all-time best series of yoga with anatomy & physiology workbooks available to students and teachers. The detail and content is outstanding and what’s more, it’s user friendly with clear diagrams and explanations. Written by an orthopedic surgeon and with over 500 detailed full color illustrations it is a fantastic and insightful read which combines modern Western science with the ancient art of Hatha Yoga.

Click here for a sample chapter from Bandha Yoga.

Ireland Yoga Holiday Information Updated

Rachel — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:51:55 +0000

Please find below a link to the newly launched Curracloe House Yoga Centre website, where we will be hosting our first of I’m sure many Iyengar Yoga holidays in Wexford, Southern Ireland. The Centre is run by the wonderful Iyengar teacher, Christine Fisk, who has turned her beautiful space into a retreat for yoga and nature lovers. Here is a small extract from her new website:

Curracloe House Yoga Centre

Curracloe House Yoga Centre is situated at the rear of an Irish Georgian Farmhouse and has wooded grounds and farm environment. The estate is situated at the edge of an area of great natural beauty and is habitat to one of the largest migrant bird populations in the world.

Curracloe Beach & Raven Wood

There is a 12-mile long sandy beach 5 minutes walk from the front gate, excellent for walking and swimming. The Centre is adjacent to Raven Wood, 300 acres of forest planted on the sand dunes about eighty years ago to stabilise the dunes at the point.

Time at Curracloe House Yoga Centre is quiet, peaceful and refreshing. As Gibran notes:

“In the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”

www.curracloehouse.com

Quinta Mimosa Chocolate Cake – the Perfect Post Yoga Treat

Rachel — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 21:04:30 +0000

One of our favourite brunch recipes from the Quinta Mimosa (Portugal) kitchen. Thanks to Carol for this GORGEOUS chocolate cake which contains NO WHEAT but ACRES OF CHOCOLATE and is best served with fresh fruit & crème fraîche or alternatively lashings of cream/ice cream/chocolate sauce – well, why not? After an invigorating morning class of backbends, holiday guests were very appreciative of this healthy-ish treat. Enjoy.

200 gms butter

1 cup sugar (white or brown or mixed)

400 gms dark chocolate

grated peel of 1 orange

half cup of coarsely chopped hazlenuts

2 tbsp finely ground hazlenuts (you can also use walnuts, almonds or chopped cherries or a combination)

6 eggs whisked together

Set over to 150°c. Line a 12″ (approx) tin with greaseproof paper.

Melt butter, sugar and chocolate and stir in the orange. Leave to cool for 5 mins.

Add chopped and ground nuts and eggs. Whisk well.

Pour into tin and cook for 12 mins. The cake will puff up high and the surface will crack.

To test if cooked (other than eating it), insert a sker and it should come out clean.

Eat and enjoy!

“Yoga is About the Now” – A Masterclass with Manouso Manos

Rachel — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:00:19 +0000

Article from the San Francisco Yoga Conference Blog (http://blogs.yogajournal.com/sf06/2006/01/come_into_the_now_1.html#more)

“Yoga is about the now,” said Manouso Manos, one of the most senior teachers in the lineage of renowned masterB.K.S. Iyengar. Of course, Manouso said, there are lots of more immediate reasons we practice—to clear our minds and to recover from injuries, for instance. But underneath all these is the attempt to still what the Indians call the “monkey mind,” our tendency to skp ahead to the future or look back into the past—indeed, to do anything but remain simply absorbed in the present.

Like Mr. Iyengar himself in his recent teachings, Manouso consistently reminded us to look through the lens of physical practice toward this larger, deeper perspective. Skillful action in asana, he said, is attained when we accomplish this absorption into the present. In a way, our task in yoga practice is to allow the pose instructions, whether they come from our teachers or our memories of past classes, to bypass the brain and go straight into the body, creating this absorption.

Yet, paradoxically, it is the minutiae of instruction which helps us do that, as Manouso’s class so amply demonstrated. When we successfully implement the details of alignment and action which Iyengar has spent decades exploring and articulating, our bodies attain an ease even in the midst of work; they’re no longer clamoring for attention. At the same time, the mind is completely engaged, unwaveringly absorbed into creating the form of the pose.

Here’s how this worked in Manouso’s instructions for Ustrasana (Camel Pose). First, he instructed us to bring the knees directly under the hip sockets or even narrower, and the shins the same distance apart. He had us try the pose with the knees slightly wider, the width most student naturally adopt, and notice that doing so instantly created shortening and compression in the lower back—a compression that is both a distraction and a danger. Next, he had us push down extremely strongly at the base of the shin, as though we could flatten the bone into the mat; reach back with both hands to the tops of the heels; take the head back; and lift the outer upper wall of the chest. He had us try a common, supposedly easier and safer modification of the pose—coming up onto flexed toes rather than onto the tops of the feet—so that we could experience for ourselves that this variation in fact again creates potentially harmful compression in the lower back.

Then, once we had come into the basic shape of the pose with these actions, he had us the broaden across the very tops of the hamstrings, bringing the outer upper hamstrings forward, and move the middle portion of the coccyx back. Again, he asked us to check into our experience, and almost all of us reported these actions had given us a sense of freedom and ease in the lower back and allowed us to lift higher in the midback and chest.

This kind of detail ran through Manouso’s instructions throughout the practice. After the classic invocation to Patanjali, we began with standing poses. “Standing poses give you the best odds in the house,” Manouso joked. “They provide the highest ratio of benefit to danger.”

We practiced Tadasana/Samasthithi (Mountain Pose/Equal Standing), Utthita Trikonsasana (Extended Triangle Pose), Utthita Parsvakonasana (Extended Side Angle Pose), and Virabhadrasana I (Warrior Pose I); briefly rested the thighs in a Virasana variation (Hero Pose variation) with the feet together; moved on to Virabhadrasana II (Warrior Pose II) and another brief rest in the Virasana variation; then finished standing poses with Prasarita Padottanasana (Intense Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend) to prepare for Salamba Sirsasana I (Headstand). After Headstand came Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose), Ustrasana, another Downward Dog, Paschimottanasana (Intense Seated Forward Bend), Bharadvajasana I (Bharadvajasa’s Twist I), and Viparita Karani (Legs-Up-The-Wall Pose).

Manouso reminded us that every pose should not be practiced in exactly the same way every time; the same pose can be practiced with different foci to create different effects. Manouso taught our first Downward Dog to wake up the legs for Ustrasana, but the second Downward Dog to counteract any compression Ustrasana might have created in our lower backs.

He also reminded us that, while we tend to desire a static, final form for our poses when we come into them, they should always be a process. According to Manouso, Iyengar’s famous dictum that today’s maximum in practice should be tomorrow’s minimum does NOT simply refer to the physical depth we go to in a pose. Much more importantly, it refers to the constant necessity for us to relinquish the preconception we have of ourselves and our capacities we must go beyond our preconceptions to become absorbed in the truth of our experience—right here in the NOW.

Next UK Workshops

Rachel — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 11:48:44 +0000

Forthcoming workshops at BALANCE Yoga Studio in Northampton, East Midlands Iyengar Group, Milton Keynes, Masonic Hall in Lyme Regis and many other events are planned from 30th January 2010 onwards. Please visit the main Classes and Events page for more information and bookings.